American Torture from the Philippines to Iraq

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
William L. d'Ambruoso
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Past ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Gray Area ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of

What accounts for the United States’ recurring turn to torture in wars against insurgents and terrorists over the past hundred-plus years? After all, torture is an abhorrent and risky interrogation method. Drawing on archival and bibliographic research, the book argues that the antitorture norm has two features that can lead to torture. First, the antitorture norm can, paradoxically, encourage torture by attracting those who believe unscrupulous methods confer advantages on those who use them. Second, because it is difficult to separate torture from milder acts, the norm lacks specificity. This gray area allows practitioners to portray their behavior as something short of torture and redefine torture to exclude their behavior. The two explanations interact as well: torture occurs because actors believe that it is harsh enough to work, and the definition of torture is blurry enough that actors believe they can sell their methods as legitimate. The book confirms these patterns in three comparable but disparate settings from the history of U.S. foreign policy: the Philippine-American War (1899–1902), the early Cold War up to the Vietnam War, and the post-2001 war on terror. In one extension of the argument, the book shows how the pervasive belief that autocrats have an edge over rule-bound democracies has tempted certain elected officials to chip away at their own liberal-democratic institutions.

Arc of Containment

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wen-Qing Ngoei
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Chinese Diaspora ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Pacific War ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial Order ◽  
The Cold War

This book recasts the history of American empire in Southeast and East Asia from the Pacific War through the end of U.S. intervention in Vietnam. It argues that anticommunist nationalism in Southeast Asia intersected with pre-existing local antipathy toward China and the Chinese diaspora to usher the region from European-dominated colonialism into U.S. hegemony. Between the late 1940s and 1960s, Britain and its indigenous collaborators in Malaya and Singapore overcame the mostly Chinese communist parties of both countries by crafting a pro-West nationalism that was anticommunist by virtue of its anti-Chinese bent. London’s neocolonial schemes in Malaya and Singapore prolonged its influence in the region. But as British power waned, Malaya and Singapore’s anticommunist leaders cast their lot with the United States, mirroring developments in the Philippines, Thailand and, in the late 1960s, Indonesia. In effect, these five anticommunist states established, with U.S. support, a geostrategic arc of containment that encircled China and its regional allies. Southeast Asia’s imperial transition from colonial order to U.S. empire, through the tumult of decolonization and the Cold War, was more characteristic of the region’s history after 1945 than Indochina’s embrace of communism.

Fighting from a Distance

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose V. Fuentecilla
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Martial Law ◽  
White House ◽  
History Of ◽  
Government Records ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This book describes how Filipino exiles and immigrants in the United States played a crucial role in the grassroots revolution that overthrew the fourteen-year dictatorship of former president Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines in 1986. A member of one of the major U.S.-based anti-Marcos movements, the author tells the story of how small groups of Filipino exiles—short on resources and shunned by some of their compatriots—overcame fear, apathy, and personal differences to form opposition organizations after Marcos's imposition of martial law and learned to lobby the U.S. government during the Cold War. In the process, the author draws from multiple hours of interviews with the principal activists, personal files of resistance leaders, and U.S. government records revealing the surveillance of the resistance by pro-Marcos White House administrations. The first full-length book to detail the history of U.S.-based opposition to the Marcos regime, it provides valuable lessons on how to persevere against a well-entrenched opponent.

Arthur Szyk

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph P. Ansell
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Art ◽  
War Effort ◽  
History Of ◽  
Narrow Definition ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Polish Government ◽  
Social Causes

Artist and illustrator Arthur Szyk was a Polish Jew whose work was overwhelmingly Jewish in theme and content. The mission he set himself was to use his artistic talents to serve humanity and the Jewish people. His work as a political artist went well beyond a narrow definition of the Jewish cause. He is best known among Jews for his illustrated Haggadah, but the majority of his work deals with contemporary political themes and social causes. In Poland, Szyk promoted the causes of freedom, toleration, and human dignity. He believed that as a Jewish artist he had a responsibility to speak for all minorities. He worked for years on behalf of the Polish government in an effort to strengthen the Jews' position. Szyk left Europe in 1940 and arrived in the United States later the same year. Determined to use his art for political purposes, he crusaded against the Nazis. Convinced that Hitler would not stop with the Jews but would suppress all freedom-loving people, he supported the war effort through his striking propaganda images of the German and Japanese armies, to great effect. After the war he turned his efforts to promoting the idea of a Jewish homeland in Israel. In every phase of his career, one finds Szyk looking to the past but hoping for the future; he believed that art could make a difference in the world, politically and socially. This biography makes a singular contribution to the history of Jewish art and of Polish–Jewish relations in the first half of the twentieth century.

Freedom of speech: A recent history of political t-shirts in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Marie Akou
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Recent History ◽  
The Us ◽  
Campaign Activity ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Definition Of

Since their invention in the 1930s, t-shirts have become one of the most common styles of casual clothing in the United States ‐ worn by all ages, genders and social classes. Although ‘graphic’ t-shirts have existed for decades, twenty-first-century technologies have made them much faster and easier to produce. Students protesting the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s wore black armbands and grew their hair long; today, students (and activists of all ages) are more likely to wear political t-shirts. In a time when anyone with modest computer skills can design a graphic and get t-shirts professionally printed and shipped in just two or three days, this medium for self- and group-expression is well-suited to the turbulence of politics. This article explores the recent history of political t-shirts in the United States in two parts. The first focuses on legislation and legal rulings, including a case heard by the US Supreme Court in 2018 regarding whether activists can wear political t-shirts in polling places (a space where any kind of campaign activity is generally forbidden). The second part explores the definition of a ‘political’ t-shirt. This section is grounded in a study of t-shirts that are currently turning up in thrift shops in Bloomington, IN ‐ a small, politically active community in a conservative state that voted for Obama in 2008 and then Trump in 2016.

The Vietnam War in Film

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Shin Huey Chong
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Military Bases ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
War Film

As a war that was not supposed to be a war—the United States never formally declared it as such—and yet was already the second in a series of wars—the first being the anticolonial war against the French that won Vietnam its independence—the Vietnam War is just as hard to pin down cinematically as it is historically. Although it is now recognized as a major film genre in US cinema, the category of the Vietnam War film can also include representations of Southeast Asia during French colonialism, the brief decades of independence before the entrance of US troops, and the long legacy of the war in terms of refugee crisis, political unrest, genocide, PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder), and protest. Not only Vietnamese but all of the peoples formerly grouped under the banner of French Indochina—including Cambodians and Laotians—were dragged into the war as willing or unwitting participants, and their experiences of combat and its aftermath are as integral to the Vietnam War film as those of the American soldiers that typically dominate the genre. The region of Southeast Asia beyond French Indochina—Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong—is also significant, both to the history of the war (as political allies, or hosts of military bases or refugee camps) and to the history of the film genre (as locations for filming, or sources for extras or actors or technical support). Outside of Southeast Asia, other nations such as the former USSR, Canada, Australia, France, and South Korea also played a part in the war, sending soldiers to the war or taking in Vietnamese, Cambodian, or Laotian refugees after the war, and these links also yielded further contributions to the Vietnam War film genre from these national cinema industries. The Vietnam War fueled many protest movements and forms of activism, becoming part of a larger, global post-1968 debate about imperialism, racism, capitalism, and militarism in many countries, and so the vigorous protests against the war also became a visible part of the film genre, especially in documentary filmmaking. As the direct survivors of the Vietnam War era begin to be supplanted by a second and even third generation for whom the war is a historical footnote, the legacy of the Vietnam War genre becomes dispersed into the larger genealogies of national cinemas and cultural memory industries, as the children of war veterans and refugees and protestors return to Southeast Asia armed with cameras and capital. Their attention is directed not only backward in time—excavating family or national histories—but also forward, forging new Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, French, Australian, and American cinemas that are indelibly marked by the Vietnam War but no longer obsessed with representing it as such.

Recentering U.S. Empire: A Structural Perspective on the Color Line

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrina Quisumbing King
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Color Line ◽  
White People ◽  
The Past ◽  
Asian Immigration ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The U.S

In the past 20 years, scholars of top sociology and race and ethnicity articles increasingly have mentioned the term “color line.” Prominent among them are sociologists concerned with how incoming waves of Latin American and Asian immigration, increasing rates of intermarriage, and a growing multiracial population will affect the U.S. racial order. While much of this work cites Du Bois, scholars stray from his definition of the color line in two ways. First, they characterize the color line as unidimensional and Black–white rather than as many divisions between non-white people and whites. Second, scholars portray the color line as the outcome of microlevel factors rather than the product of international geopolitical arrangements. I contend that in contrast to scholarship that portrays immigrants and intermarried and multiracial people as shifting the color line, international and imperial policies related to immigration, intermarriage, and multiracial identification are longstanding sites of the construction of the U.S. racial order. Scholars should conceptualize the United States as an empire state in order to analyze the international political history of multiple color lines. In doing so, they can distinguish between differences in kind and degree of racial divisions.

Louis Menand: The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. 2001. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 546 pp.

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-204
Author(s):  
Lance Kenney
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cold War ◽  
William James ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Oliver Wendell Holmes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Charles Peirce ◽  
The Cold War

Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club, daunting in its choice of subject matter, closely aligns itself with the ancient sense of the word ‘history’ as a fluid, almost epic narrative. The Metaphysical Club of the title was a conversation group that met in Cambridge for a few months in 1872. Its membership roster listed some of the greatest intellectuals of the day: Charles Peirce, William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Chauncey Wright, amongst others. There is no record of the Club’s discussions or debates—in fact, the only direct reference to the Club is made by Peirce in a letter written thirty-five years later. Menand utilizes the Club as a jumping-off point for a sweeping analysis of the beliefs of the day. The subtitle of the book belies its true mission: ‘a story of ideas in America.’ Menand discusses the intellectual and social conditions that helped shape these men by the time they were members of the Club. He then shows the philosophical, political, and cultural impact that these men went on to have. In doing so, Menand traces a history of ideas in the United States from immediately prior to the Civil War to the beginning of the Cold War.

Ballet in the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Searcy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
The United States ◽  
Performing Artists ◽  
Exchange Programs ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

During the Cold War, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union developed cultural exchange programs, in which they sent performing artists abroad in order to generate goodwill for their countries. Ballet companies were frequently called on to serve in these programs, particularly in the direct Soviet-American exchange. This book analyzes four of the early ballet exchange tours, demonstrating how this series of encounters changed both geopolitical relations and the history of dance. The ballet tours were enormously popular. Performances functioned as an important symbolic meeting point for Soviet and American officials, creating goodwill and normalizing relations between the two countries in an era when nuclear conflict was a real threat. At the same time, Soviet and American audiences did not understand ballet in the same way. As American companies toured in the Soviet Union and vice versa, audiences saw the performances through the lens of their own local aesthetics. Ballet in the Cold War introduces the concept of transliteration to understand this process, showing how much power viewers wielded in the exchange and explaining how the dynamics of the Cold War continue to shape ballet today.

Prologue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter D. McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Intangible Heritage ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Print Literacy

The section introduces Part II, which spans the period 1946 to 2014, by tracing the history of the debates about culture within UNESCO from 1947 to 2009. It considers the central part print literacy played in the early decades, and the gradual emergence of what came to be called ‘intangible heritage’; the political divisions of the Cold War that had a bearing not just on questions of the state and its role as a guardian of culture but on the idea of cultural expression as a commodity; the slow shift away from an exclusively intellectualist definition of culture to a more broadly anthropological one; and the realpolitik surrounding the debates about cultural diversity since the 1990s. The section concludes by showing how at the turn of the new millennium UNESCO caught up with the radical ways in which Tagore and Joyce thought about linguistic and cultural diversity.

Mahjong

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annelise Heinz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Women's Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Heritage ◽  
Cultural Origins ◽  
Definition Of

Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture illustrates how the spaces between tiles and the moments between games have fostered distinct social cultures in the United States. When this mass-produced game crossed the Pacific it created waves of popularity over the twentieth century. Mahjong narrates the history of this game to show how it has created a variety of meanings, among them American modernity, Chinese American heritage, and Jewish American women’s culture. As it traveled from China to the United States and caught on with Hollywood starlets, high society, middle-class housewives, and immigrants alike, mahjong became a quintessentially American pastime. This book also reveals the ways in which women leveraged a game for a variety of economic and cultural purposes, including entrepreneurship, self-expression, philanthropy, and ethnic community building. One result was the forging of friendships within mahjong groups that lasted decades. This study unfolds in two parts. The first half is focused on mahjong’s history as related to consumerism, with a close examination of its economic and cultural origins. The second half explores how mahjong interwove with the experiences of racial inclusion and exclusion in the evolving definition of what it means to be American. Mahjong players, promoters, entrepreneurs, and critics tell a broad story of American modernity. The apparent contradictions of the game—as both American and foreign, modern and supposedly ancient, domestic and disruptive of domesticity—reveal the tensions that lie at the heart of modern American culture.

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